Obama Issues Memorandum Directing Government Action on International LGBT Issues

[Ian David]

Source: Metro Weekly

President Obama today issued a memorandum "directing all agencies engaged abroad to ensure that U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons."

Among the steps required by the memorandum are efforts to fight the criminalization of LGBT status or conduct, as well as to support the protection of LGBT refugees and asylum seekers.

<snip>

"The Obama Administration has made a tremendous difference in the lives of LGBT people in the United States and this new strategy helps to extend that presidential leadership across the globe," Solmonese said. "There is no question that the administration's record of advancing equality for LGBT people has been enhanced by the leadership of Secretary Clinton who consistently underscores the simple truth that LGBT rights are human rights."

According to HRC, the presidential memorandum is the first ever U.S. government strategy to deal with human rights abuses against LGBT people abroad.

Read more: http://metroweekly.com/poliglot/2011/12/obama-issues-memorandum-direct.html

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Read the memorandum: (PDF) http://metroweekly.com/poliglot/2011lgbt_mem_rel.pdf (PDF)

[No Elephants]

1. K & R

[Zenlitened]

2. K&R. "The simple truth that LGBT rights are human rights." - n/t

[CBHagman]

3. A link to the secretary of state's remarks from today.

Remarks in Recognition of International Human Rights Day, as posted by the State Department.

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2011/12/178368.htm

And a portion of the speech:

Some have suggested that gay rights and human rights are separate and distinct; but, in fact, they are one and the same. Now, of course, 60 years ago, the governments that drafted and passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were not thinking about how it applied to the LGBT community. They also weren’t thinking about how it applied to indigenous people or children or people with disabilities or other marginalized groups. Yet in the past 60 years, we have come to recognize that members of these groups are entitled to the full measure of dignity and rights, because, like all people, they share a common humanity.

This recognition did not occur all at once. It evolved over time. And as it did, we understood that we were honoring rights that people always had, rather than creating new or special rights for them. Like being a woman, like being a racial, religious, tribal, or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.

It is violation of human rights when people are beaten or killed because of their sexual orientation, or because they do not conform to cultural norms about how men and women should look or behave. It is a violation of human rights when governments declare it illegal to be gay, or allow those who harm gay people to go unpunished. It is a violation of human rights when lesbian or transgendered women are subjected to so-called corrective rape, or forcibly subjected to hormone treatments, or when people are murdered after public calls for violence toward gays, or when they are forced to flee their nations and seek asylum in other lands to save their lives. And it is a violation of human rights when life-saving care is withheld from people because they are gay, or equal access to justice is denied to people because they are gay, or public spaces are out of bounds to people because they are gay. No matter what we look like, where we come from, or who we are, we are all equally entitled to our human rights and dignity.